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There’s probably no description in politics that has become more meaningless in the last four years than “political populist.” The proof is that political reporters regularly apply that term to both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, two politicians whose political values, driving passions and most devoted followers couldn’t be any more different if they came from different planets. They kind of do.
But beginning Wednesday, Jan. 20, Americans are going to be reminded once again what a real political populist in the White House actually looks like. If populism still means anything, it has to include improving the lives of ordinary, working-class people instead of simply passing enormous tax cuts for the rich and powerful “elites” at the top.
Golly, I wonder which president actually cares about doing that. Could it be incoming President Joe Biden, “Middle-Class Joe” as he was known when he was the poorest man in the U.S. Senate, or the departing (kicking and screaming all the way) President Trump, the billionaire heir to a family fortune whose only legislative achievement was passing another massive Republican tax cut costing $1.9 trillion over 10 years going overwhelmingly to millionaires and billionaires?
Trump’s claim to actually care about “forgotten Americans” left behind was just another lie among more than 25,000 that Washington Post factcheckers couldn’t keep up with because Trump was fabricating such a blinding torrent of lies during his term and reelection campaign.
The irony is the early model of fiery populist demagoguery in American politics was Huey Long, the corrupt Democratic political boss elected governor of Louisiana in 1928 and Senator from 1932 until his assassination in 1935. Long ruled through corrupt political patronage, but he also delivered real results for the poor and working-class Louisianans he roused with his rhetoric. He expanded social programs, including free medical care, free textbooks for students, college financial aid, prison rehabilitation and massive job-creating public works. Long was an avowed enemy of the political power of multimillion-dollar corporations, the primary beneficiaries of Trump’s corruption along with himself and other wealthy Americans.
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A New New Deal?
Long was an early Democratic supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt but split from FDR in 1933 and began attacking the president from the left. Long was preparing to run against FDR in 1936 with his own Share Our Wealth movement proposing massive social spending and a wealth tax to fund wealth redistribution. After Long was shot by the son-in-law of a Louisiana political rival, FDR incorporated many of Long’s ideas in New Deal social programs that Republicans—including Trump—have tried to dismantle ever since. The only Long political action replicated by Trump was the corruption.
Trump’s most absurd attacks on President Biden have tried to smear him as a tool of dangerous leftwing socialists. Biden enters the White House with aspirations of building on the nation’s most popular social programs that began with Social Security and unemployment benefits under FDR’s New Deal and have been expanded by Democrats ever since with civil rights laws, Medicare and Medicaid under President Lyndon Johnson and the Affordable Care Act and economic stimulus under President Barack Obama. Early advocates of those proposals were democratic socialists in Wisconsin and populists like Huey Long, but they’re now recognized as the most universally beneficial programs of American democracy.
Almost as ridiculous are Republican attacks on Biden as an elitist for appointing well-qualified cabinet secretaries with good educations to run his administration instead the corrupt, cruel incompetents favored by Trump. The charge is laughable against Biden, who grew up in a working-class Scranton family receiving a University of Delaware state college education: “We’re used to guys who look down their nose at us,” who think, “you must be stupid if you didn’t go to an Ivy League school” like the rich kids. He was proud to run for president as “Scranton versus Park Avenue” where Trump lived in his gold tower.
Trump publicly demonstrated his contempt for the working class by assuming the best way to attract their support was to openly appeal to racism and religious bigotry. It was disturbingly successful for a while, but it failed to recognize the growing racial diversity of America’s professional class and its workforce ultimately alienating increasing numbers of urban and suburban voters from the Republican Party.
Republicans have to rely on voter suppression and dishonest gerrymandering to win elections because their economic and taxation policies overwhelmingly benefitting the wealthiest among us no longer have majority support. Voters increasingly favor the Democratic economic agenda of raising minimum wages, requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes and making health care, higher education and childcare affordable.
Trump’s reaction to his defeat in the election has been mudslinging. Biden has been proving him wrong by looking and acting as presidential as any great American president we’ve ever had. It’s good to have one again.
